


And If I Don't Hurt Her, She'll Do Me No Harm

by SegaBarrett



Category: Carrie - All Media Types
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Kittens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-06 18:50:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16393193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Carrie makes two unexpected friends.





	And If I Don't Hurt Her, She'll Do Me No Harm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Missy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own Carrie, and I make no money from this.

Mama wasn’t going to be home for another two hours, and anyway Carrie didn’t want to go home just yet.

It was three days since the blood, and everyone was acting weird. Sue Snell was acting like she wanted to be nice to Carrie, and everyone else couldn’t stop snickering as she walked by. 

She wished she could just be invisible, but that had never been an option for her. 

Maybe if she just kept walking, there would be somewhere else she would appear. But they would know; somehow they would know, too. All about her and who and what she was.

Chamberlain seemed quiet, the sort of dead quiet that she had never examined before today. It had always been the norm, it had always been home.   
She let out a long sigh, wondering if she would be a different person now. Ms. Desjardins had told her that getting her period meant that she was a woman now.

How was she supposed to be a woman when she hadn’t even figured out how to be a girl? It felt as if there were so many things she should know how to do already. Things that the others girls seemed to have been born knowing. The outfits they wore without ever seeming awkward or off-step, the way they always knew the right time to laugh when a cute boy was talking to them.

She would look into the mirror in the locker room when they had all run out already and sometimes she would move her lips, pretending to know the right words to say. Pretending she knew the steps to the dance. But by the end of it, when Ms. Desjardins would call her name and tell her to get out there already, she just wanted to cry.

While she was lost in thought, something suddenly rushed by her and she stopped in her tracks, nearly falling over. She could just imagine what people would say if they say her now – “Carrie White eats shit!” “Can’t even walk down the street right!” 

She swallowed hard and looked to see what had nearly knocked her over. Whatever it was had been small and black – maybe it was a skunk? It wouldn’t be the first time she had caught a glimpse of them in the backyard when she would sneak out to rake leaves. Stupid thing, spraying people all the time.

She leaned down, curious despite not wanting to do battle with a skunk. 

Carrie saw the tiny little black tail first, curled around the side of the fence. Then she spotted a pair of bright yellow eyes, wide and frightened.  
Just like her.

The kitten’s ears were standing up; then they slipped back down as he took a nervous shuffle forward. He regarded Carrie as if he was arguing with himself about whether she was a good person or a bad person.

“I don’t know either, kitty,” she mumbled, extending her palm towards the kitten’s nose. The kitten leaned his face forward, questioning. Then, as if spurred on by something, the kitten pressed his nose in and rubbed against Carrie’s fingers.

Carrie wanted to cry, suddenly, because she had never had anyone or anything touch her with affection like that. She supposed her mother must have, once upon a time, maybe when she was very little, before she was bad and sinful all the time.

Or maybe it had been like that since the day she had been born.

The kitten let out a tiny, small mew and rubbed his head against Carrie’s hand, eyes shutting happily. 

“Where did you come from?” Carrie asked, quietly.

The kitten rubbed his head against her again, leaning back to sit on the sidewalk and looked up at her.

She sighed. 

It wasn’t like she could bring the kitten home. She was sure that Mama would find it sinful, especially since it was a bad cat. Weren’t cats supposed to be servants of Satan, and weren’t black cats supposed to be bad luck?

She couldn’t just leave him here, though. He looked so alone and sad; he looked like he needed a friend.

Carrie knew what that felt like. 

She scooped him up in one fell swoop and held him firmly to her chest. She would protect him from anyone who might want to harm him.

She wasn’t quite sure how she knew that the kitten was a “him”, but she knew with an odd sort of certainty, the way she knew the ways to make marbles dance and bells chime. It was inborn in her; she was made out of sin was what Mama had told her.

But maybe she just knew things and maybe that wasn’t bad at all. She wished that there was someone she could ask, but who would she talk to?   
She could talk to the kitten, maybe. She wouldn’t see a look of annoyance on those bright yellow eyes, at least she hoped not.

There was a general store down the road where Mama went to buy groceries sometimes, a little family-owned place called Barrett’s. Carrie went in there sometimes too, when Mama was having one of her bad days and didn’t want to go anywhere or do anything but get on her knees and pray to the Lord.

Carrie pushed the door open, now, kitten tucked under her arm and hoping against hope, ready to be shot down.

She rapped on the screen door that led into the store first, not sure if anyone was inside or if they were on some kind of a break. 

A head popped up, quickly, a sandy-haired boy looking as if he was in the midst of getting caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing. He squinted at her and then made a motion with his arm, ushering her to come inside. She steadied the kitten – now meowing- against her hip so she could grab the door handle with her free hand. 

Then she stepped up the step and inside. 

The sandy-haired head was oddly familiar, and the realization set Carrie’s mind racing. Someone she knew, someone she knew – friend or foe? She had to be sure. 

Daniel Barrett was his name, she remembered; he was a junior at Chamberlain but she couldn’t zero in on any notable interactions with him, then. Not foe, then, at least not foe.

“Hi,” she managed to squeak out before looking back down at the ground. Daniel rose up high, and Carrie wanted nothing more than to shrink into the ground. She was taking a risk, although a necessary one. 

“Oh, hey.” He looked at her and made a short wave with his hand. “Uh, Carrie, right? Carrie White.”

“That’s me,” she said quietly. This was a mistake. How could she trust him with this?

But it wasn’t as if she could bring the kitten home to Mama. She’d find some way to call it a sin, she knew it. (Maybe not, some little hopeful voice in her head said, maybe there was still a chance if she turned around and ran now. Why should she try to trust one of Them?)

“Hey, is that a kitten?” Daniel asked, coming out from around the counter. 

“Oh huh? Yeah,” Carrie replied. “I… My mother doesn’t like cats. I didn’t know if you… it was a dumb idea. I can go… I just…”

“Oh, no. I love cats. My sister took hers when she went off to Michigan State so…” He took a step forward and extended his arms. “I think he likes you… He doesn’t want to go.”

It was true. The cat had nuzzled against Carrie’s chest and was firmly pressed there. 

Daniel reached out and ran a gentle hand over the kitten’s head. Carrie shook, on tenterhooks, afraid of having someone so close. 

“Oh,” he said. “Sorry.”

“No, I just… I didn’t…” Carrie started, and it was hard to keep going but it was even harder to stop. 

“Listen… I mean… I would love to have a store cat,” Daniel began, “But maybe… Maybe we could share him? You know, joint custody?” He smiled. He was making a joke but it was one that Carrie didn’t really get. And now her heart was racing and she didn’t want to let go of the tiny kitten, not for anything, but it was getting late and if she brought him home… 

A kitten wouldn’t do well in the closet. A tiny living creature needed light, needed warmth and happiness. Needed to be free.

Will I ever get that? She let herself wonder, let herself picture being out in the world, but it was too wide, too open. The world was like a field, except it was clogged with people. Scary people, the kinds that would laugh at her like the girls had laughed in the shower. And they would just keep on laughing until…

“Why don’t you come by every day after school? We can feed him together. And, well, we would need to come up with a name.”

“Like what?” Carrie asked. She felt like she was peeking through her fingers, letting herself think things that she couldn’t let in to the other part of her brain. She wasn’t meant to talk to someone this long, to feel the little trill in her heart, to consider that maybe there were people who wouldn’t hurt, who wouldn’t laugh. 

“Well… what about Midnight? Since he’s a black cat.”

“That’s not very original,” Carrie said, with a smile slipping out before she could shove it back down. 

“Well… I’m not very original either,” Daniel countered. 

“I don’t mind.”

Carrie slowly extended her arms, feeling like a mother leaving her child with a babysitter for the first time, or at least how she imagined that would feel. The ache, the need to be close. The kitten – Midnight – had curled his little paw around her arm and didn’t seem to want to let go. She rubbed his head experimentally, carefully. 

He let out a purr and then a tiny, wistful meow.

Daniel let out a squeak of his own.

“I wonder where his mother is. She just left him alone.”

Carrie looked down and let out a sigh, placing Midnight into Daniel’s waiting arms.

“Lucky,” she mumbled.

He cradled the kitten against his chest, smiling.

“So, you should come by every day after school. Or at least until you get tired of looking at my face.”

Carrie laughed and immediately covered her mouth. Dangerous, she reminded herself, it was dangerous to show…

But everything was dangerous. Living was dangerous. Sometimes it was blood pouring like a spout and cotton slamming into your head, and sometimes it was rocks tumbling down, down, down.

This was a calculated risk; that was what they called it, didn’t they?

“I don’t think I’ll get tired. You have my cat, after all.”

With that, she scattered to her feet and brushed the cat hair off of her dress as best she could. She’d have a hell of a time explaining it to Mama.

She smirked as she walked home – black cats, sign of the devil, indeed.


End file.
